After determining proper business models for your marketplace, it’s time to find an appropriate technical solution to build up the platform. To create an online marketplace, there are 3 popular options: writing the codes on your own, hiring a web professional team, or using WordPress software. Each choice has its own pros and cons, which will be discussed in this post to help you have a better decision.

To build a pricing strategy for your marketplace is not easy. What works for this marketplace might not work for the others. Many people may prefer high rate while others think a very low rate would be effective in attracting a lot of users to site. There’s no right or wrong answer since each marketplace has its own business strategy including pricing structure to remain competitive in the market while still being able to make profit out of it.

Commission fee is the most popular business model whose pricing structure is also complicated to determine. How much should you charge? Should it be a same flat rate for every transaction or the percentage of the total sum? Who will pay the bill? The buyers, the sellers, or both? There’s no correct formula for this but we will discuss important aspects to help you decide the pricing for your marketplace.

Whenever you install a WordPress blog, you will find that all of your posts are automatically being categorized as “uncategorized.” In case you forget to assign a post to a category, WordPress will publish it as “uncategorized” in default. That’s why there are a ton of posts listed as uncategorized if you don’t have in the habit of assigning the category for the post. It actually makes your site look unprofessional 😔

How can you get rid of this?

You can either choose the new category or rename this default category.(more…)

Whether you are a business owner or marketer, you have ever heard about Google Analytics and its benefits. This tool is the most website tracking service that allows you to collect data and get the insight you need to optimize your marketing campaign as well as boost up the revenue.

You will probably imagine that there are too many complicated steps to set up and integrate the tool into your web such as getting the tracking code, installing Google Analytics to your site, etc. But it’s much more simple than you think if your site is running our theme. That’s because Google Analytics is available in our themes, so you only need to insert the tracking code to the Google Analytics Script field. It only takes you 1 minutes to set up.(more…)

Business models (aka revenue models) define the way you operate and monetize your marketplace. Among different models, commission is the most profitable one for online marketplace as it allows you to “own” every buying-selling activity and earn a fee per transaction. That said, there is a lot of work to do for this commission model to succeed. Transaction value is one of the challenges. To make a sound commission fee and keep users on site for a long time, the value provided for both providers and buyers need to be great enough so that your users won’t try to bypass your system.

This post will suggest some ways you can practice to provide value for users on your marketplace (in the scope of a service marketplace).

If you have customized your site, please save these codes. It can help you restore the previous version in case you aren’t satisfied with the new design.

From FreelanceEngine 1.8, all payment gateway extensions of FreelanceEngine are separated from AE extensions family. So, you must deactivate the old plugins including AE Pin, AE PayUMoney, AE PayFast, AE MOLPay, AE Paymill, and AE SagePay. Then, go to your member area to download and install new plugins such as FrE Pin, FrE PayUMoney, FrE PayFast, FrE MOLPay, FrE Paymill, and FrE SagePay instead.

Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, and WPML plugins aren’t supported from this version. So, you should deactivate these plugins.

As we promised in our sneak peek 3 weeks ago, today we’re here to announce you that FreelanceEngine 1.8 is officially released with the new design. We hope you will love the new appearance of FreelanceEngine and find it cleaner and more intuitive to use.(more…)

Please note that EngineThemes will be closed for Labor Day on May 01 and May 02. During this time, our customer service would have some delay. All your requests will be resolved when we resume our work on Wednesday, 03rd May 2017.

We are sorry for any inconvenience the delay may cause.

Thank you for your understanding and continuous support. Wish you a happy holiday!

***Attention: If you are using MicrojobEngine and intend to use SSL or HTTP/2 for your site, please note that you MUST backup database and disable the “Log Into Admin Panel” feature (Engine Settings → Theme Options → Log Into Admin Panel)in advance.

SSL and HTTP/2: you’ve probably heard about these two terms before, but did you know that they are really significant for all WordPress sites? Before we talk about why it is necessary for your site, we’re thrilled to announce you that MicrojobEngine 1.3.2 now can run well with SSL and HTTP/2. So, you now can easily to install SSL and HTTP/2 in your service marketplace right now!

We hope our blog post will give you a complete knowledge about SSL and HTTP/2 as well as how it can benefit your WordPress site.(more…)

What are marketplace business models and why do they matter? Business models define how your business operates and generates revenue from its products and services. A scalable model is important to help your business achieve sustainability in the long run. In fact, there are many types of marketplace business model, each of which has its own pros and cons. So it is essential to find out and apply the most suitable model for your site.

A few months ago, we conducted a survey to gather your opinions & suggestions regarding FreelanceEngine. The results show that most of you want the theme design to be changed. On the other hand, we’re planning to develop FreelanceEngine with more features and functions spreading out from now until the end of this year, but the current design doesn’t meet any requirements. As a result, we decided to change the whole design of our theme.

The new design of FreelanceEngine will be rolled out in May in FreelanceEngine version 1.8. So, today we’re excited to share with you the cool UI design in the upcoming version!(more…)

MjE PayPal Express Checkout v1.0 has just released for a few days. However, there are some problems coming up during the checkout process when your users select PayPal Express Checkout to proceed the payment. That’s because this payment gateway has some small changes, which cause our codes to be affected as well.

To fix this problem, we adjusted our codes to keep up with this change and update them in the new version of MjE PayPal Express Checkout 1.0.1.

Therefore, you MUST upgrade MjE PayPal Express Checkout plugin to the latest version 1.0.1 so that this payment gateway can function seamlessly on your site.

We are excited to officially announce that MicrojobEngine 1.3.2 is rolled out with some changes and improvements in admin dashboard. The UI is now cleaner and more intuitive to use. Besides, two new payment extensions are released, including MjE Authorize.Net and MjE PayPal Express Checkout.

*Notes:

MjE PayPal Express Checkout is a free extension of MicrojobEngine, so just download and install this payment gateway on your site as an additional payment method.

Before updating your site to MicrojobEngine 1.3.2, please backup your database in advance to avoid being lost all files and data when the nasty happens.

Along with MicrojobEngine 1.3.2, MjE Stripe 1.0.1, MjE Paystack 1.0.1, and MjE Job Verification 1.0.1 are also updated to the latest version.

Most of online shoppers love the flexibility and security of PayPal. Therefore, this payment gateway is always our top priority during the product development process. Although PayPal was already integrated into MicrojobEngine theme, but it’s not enough. Some of you might find it inconvenient when buyers are not automatically redirected to the previous page after completing the transaction. That’s why we decided to carry out PayPal Express Checkout as an additional payment method for you.

PayPal Express Checkout is a free extension of MicrojobEngine, all you need to do is downloading and installing it in your service marketplace.